Wednesday, February 10, 2016

As has been the case for as long as I can remember, the winner of the ITA Team Indoor Championships moves to the No.1 spot in the rankings that week. and this week is no exception, with the Cal women taking over the No. 1 spot from Vanderbilt. Because the computer rankings don't start until February 22nd this year, and are always at least a week after the Team Indoor, the coaches casting ballots can see to it that the indoor champion gets to No. 1. (Jonathan Kelley, who did such a great job covering the WTI for zootennis, has bestowed his awards from the weekend in Madison at his blog On The Rise).

The Florida, Stanford and USC women elected to skip the Team Indoor this year, a frequent choice for the first two, but not for USC, which has always played previously. USC travelled to Gainesville over the weekend and lost to Florida 7-0 and fell from No. 4 to No. 11 in the process. Ohio State moved from 16 to 6 after beating Vanderbilt, which fell all the way to No. 5. Texas A&M, who was surprisingly seeded in Madison based on last week's unpublished rankings, went 1-2 on the weekend and fell to 16.

With the Men's Team Indoor this weekend, the men's rankings are unpublished so the rankings you will see in the results from Charlottesville will be those of February 3.

Both men and women do have new singles and doubles rankings, and these are computer rankings.

Ohio State freshman Francesca Di Lorenzo, who went 3-0 in Madison, moved from No. 2 to No 1., while the previous No. 1, Joana Eidukonyte of Clemson, fell to 11.

Top 10 Women's Singles:

1. Francesca Di Lorenzo, Ohio State

2. Danielle Collins, Virginia

3. Hayley Carter, North Carolina

4. Belinda Woolcock, Florida

5. Klara Fabikova, Cal

6. Suisa Stefani, Pepperdine

7. Sinead Lohan, Miami

8. Breaunna Addison, Texas

9. Jasmine Lee, Mississippi State

10. Stephanie Wagner, Miami

Top 5 Women's Doubles:

1. Hayley Carter and Whitney Kay, North Carolina

2. Maegan Manasse and Denise Starr, Cal

3. Matea Cutura and Christine Maddox, Pepperdine

4. Aldila Sutjiadi and Mami Adachi, Kentucky

5. Taylor Davidson and Caroline Doyle, Stanford

Dominik Koepfer of Tulane retained his place at the top of the men's singles rankings, and Virginia's Thai Kwiatkowski remains at No. 2. But there were plenty of notable moves, with Roberto Cid of South Florida breaking into the Top 10 and Jared Hiltzik of Illinois going from 21 to 10. Hiltzik's teammate Aleks Vukic went from no ranking to No. 12 and Kentucky's William Bushamuka rose from 79 to 25.

The annual BNP Paribas Showdown at Madison Square Garden in New York, is scheduled for March 8, and once again two juniors will be part of the exhibition, which features pros Serena Williams, Caroline Wozniacki, Gael Monfils and Stan Wawrinka. Like last year, the juniors participating this year are girls: Southern California's Carson Branstine and Florida's Hurricane Tyra Black.

This release has errors, the most obvious of which is the dates of the junior participants, with Opelka and Tiafoe playing in 2014 and Price and Gauff in 2015. And there's no such thing as an 18s national team, but I assume the reference is to the 18s sectional team competition in August. Branstine did play on the Southern California team, which won the title. At any rate, it's great for juniors to have an opportunity to play in an event of that magnitude, and I'm sure they'll never forget the experience.